Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a belt for electrophotography such as a conveyance transfer belt or an intermediate transfer belt to be used for, for example, an electrophotographic image forming apparatus such as a copying machine or a printer.
Description of the Related Art
In an electrophotographic image forming apparatus, a belt for electrophotography serving as a conveyance transfer belt for conveying a transfer material or as an intermediate transfer belt for temporarily transferring and holding a toner image is used. The belt for electrophotography comes into contact with and slides on other members in the electrophotographic image forming apparatus. Therefore, in the case where the surface of the belt for electrophotography is excessively smooth, adhesion to the other members or a blocking phenomenon is caused in some cases.
In particular, when a photosensitive drum and the surface of the belt for electrophotography are liable to adhere to each other, the running stability of the photosensitive drum and the belt for electrophotography may be impaired in some cases. Further, when a cleaning blade and the surface of the belt for electrophotography are liable to adhere to each other, blade curling or cleaning failure occurs in some cases. In order to solve the above-mentioned problems, hitherto, an attempt has been made to roughen the surface of a belt for electrophotography (Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2004-182382).
Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2007-31625 proposes, as a method of roughening the surface of a belt for electrophotography, a method involving causing a surface layer to contain particles each having a particle diameter of about 0.1 to 3 μm to form a protruded portion derived from the particles on the surface of the surface layer. However, a singularly large protrusion may be formed on the surface of the surface layer owing to agglomeration of the particles contained in the surface layer and the like. In the case of using the belt for electrophotography having such protrusion as an intermediate transfer belt, the transfer of a toner image from a photosensitive member (hereinafter sometimes referred to as “primary transfer”), or the transfer of a toner image from the intermediate transfer belt to paper or the like (hereinafter sometimes referred to as “secondary transfer”) are inhibited, which may cause defects in an electrophotographic image.